You are here

How We Live in Our Intentional Universe Community

We operate as a cooperative that shares our cooperative benefits based on work merit and responsibility levels.

"Fully enjoying life now while also being prepared for adapting to what is coming" is our unofficial slogan.

Here are some of the ways we achieve this.

Members can live in at our centers in community, in intentional self-created local co-housing or, they can live independently in their own local housing and still participate in activities and events within our local communities. (At our centers for any community housing that may be available sometimes there are full or partial work exchanges available to qualified individuals.)

Mutual benefit within the community can range from sharing preparedness information and resources, bulk discount buying, sharing tools and equipment, sharing specific technical skills (medical, legal, etc.,) or sharing common tasks such as cooking cleaning, maintenance, community gardening etc. Members choose their level of involvement. It can be at the level of simple shared mutual buying or other benefits or it can be a deeper levels of commitment and participation in co-creating our vision.

Members pay monthly dues based upon the amount of benefits that each member chooses to receive and share within the community i.e. bulk buying, discounts on community events, etc. All initial memberships are provisional for 3 months up to one year (based upon the type of membership desired,) and until existing members vote on the granting of full membership rights to provisional members.

Because commitments and contribution are essential to the success in all authentic communities new members are required to make community service and support commitments appropriate to the level of community membership that they have chosen. If they hold full time positions within the community they will also share in the communities income based on their work merit and responsibility.

Our Core Values, Principles and Practices:

We use current science to understand reality objectively and then we use this reality congruent knowledge to create the most optimal and its practical reality-grounded approaches to living and solving the challenges of life. This inherently makes us a community of continuous learning and ongoing member education as the prime launch point and central hub from which the success of all our other values and actions spring or come into being.

Our core guiding operational values, principles and action practices of our community are based upon the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview and are called the Universe Principles of Sustainability. This new worldview and its science-based action and attitudinal principles present a new way to see and be as well as enhance justice in the world. The links below will take you to the action and attitudinal parts of the Universe Principles of Sustainability. When you read these principles you will also see many of our community core values expressed in each principle.

To see the Big Picture core action principles of a Universe Community member, click here.

To see the Big Picture foundational attitudes and perspectives of a Universe Community member, click here.

For an advanced level overview of the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview and the principles of progressive evolution that create the core principles behind our Universe community vision, click here.

For more information on the key qualities or tools a self-organizing individual possesses, click here.

For an excellent and more detailed summary description of the non-evolution science values, attitudes and behavioral characteristics of mature and developed Universe Community members and leaders, see the book Spiral Dynamics, Mastering values, leadership, and change by Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan. See the two sections that describe the "yellow meme" individual and the "turquoise meme" individual.

Our Similarities to Other Intentional Communities

Most intentional community agendas focus on either personal development and happiness or personal healing or all of these things at the same time. While Universe communities also contain these essential elements that are parts of any healthy community the are more secondary goals in our community. Our primary focus is first on our member learning and then teaching others how to create:

More than anything else one could easily say that at our core we are a lifelong learning and teaching intentional community focused on our primary focus above. Our most valuable current exchange with the macro culture is our educational services relating to the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview, the principles of sustainable prosperity and our work in teaching and promoting Job One for Humanity.

To understand our ideas in forwarding the greener Third Industrial Revolution please also read:

1.) The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Jeremy Rifkin. We cannot recommend this book enough because of its Evolution 2.0 compatibility and the new vision of hope and practicality that this book presents on the already emerging Third Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial revolution is the new sharing economy and democratized laterally scaled networks bringing about the new Internet of Things in a collaborative commons. This book contains many of the details on how together we we rebalance today's economic system and evolve out of the extremes of greed capitalism. This book will help you sustainably thrive in all the coming economic changes. (A must read for every Evolutioneer.)

Our Model for Ethical Income Creation and Productivity Exchange with Outside Communities:

Every individual, group and community must exchange energy and productivity with others to keep from violating the second law of thermodynamics a basic driver throughout evolution. Universe communities being primarily educational achieve the goal of ethical income creation and productivity exchange with outside communities by offering classes, both on and off-line. These classes are created for members of the local universe community as well as individuals, businesses, communities and even governmental organizations outside that particular local universe community.

The classes focus on teaching the Universe Evolutionary Worldview and how to use its principles and tools. These classes also teach essential art-of-living skills, which are not normally taught in today's homes or educational institutions. Click here to see more about these essential art-of-living skills. Each local universe community sets its own prices for the costs of the classes and services it provides to community members and individuals and organizations outside the community.

4.) Finally, click here to see the master list of the integral and practical art-of-living skills that are or will be taught. These additional skills are aligned with the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview and our sustainable prosperity mission to help Universe community members reach their full socio-emotional, cognitive and life skills developmental potentials.

Our Health and Wellness Perspectives:

We believe in creating both a healthy interior and exterior environment. Our sustainable prosperity actions and Universe Principles speak to how we create exterior environmental health. To create interior personal health we support harmful chemical-free good nutrition, physical fitness, stress management, relationship quality as well as exploring some kind of a humanistic or spiritual exploration for deeper meaning depending in one is of a spiritual nature.

Our Community Thinking and Decision Making Systems:

Universe Communities use, teach and integrate the following four modern, postmodern and evolutionary thinking systems:

We use a simple majority consensus method of decision making for many issues within the community. For issues involving evolving our foundational goals and vision we require a 3/4 super majority of non-provisional members. To get a general outline and feeling on how we set and run our issue presentation, discussion and decisional meetings see the document called "The Five Fold Path of Constructive Meetings by Starhawk.

Our Ethical, Behavioral and "Constitutional" Structure:

Every community needs basic constitutional structure based on sound principles and an accurate understanding of reality. For this essential minimal structure we have developed and discovered many evolutionary principles, created a formalized code of ethics and conduct from them as well as constructed many other guiding models for creating and maintaining healthy individual and collective boundaries and for the means and ways in which we will achieve our goals.

Members of our community first study the particular codes of conduct, which are most appropriate to their level of development and responsibility within our community. After that they careful study and evaluate the codes of conduct and then make personal commitments to live these codes (and in some cases our values and ideals,) to the best of their abilities. The willingness of community members to make clear and open personal commitments to the community vision, value standards and acceptable behaviors is one of the most important factors that creates and empowers the community culture, particularly in the areas of its effectiveness, empathetic cohesion and authenticity.

Click here for a list of traditional, modern, post-modnern and evolutionary virtues promoted in Universe Communities. Universe Communities are a dynamic incubator for the balanced development of virtue within an evolutionary context.

For our position paper on healthy sexuality among community members, click here.

For more of our other administrative principles and position papers in our community see our extensive FAQ by clicking here.

We believe in qualified members and leaders and having and holding just the essential minimum hierarchy necessary to facilitate a healthy an efficient community environment. To become a member, leader, teacher or facilitator in our community means that one is qualified for that level of membership/leadership and that they have earned those positions of by the merit of their education and previous successful activities and experience.

Good leaders understand the area of their leadership, have successful experience in those areas and if great, also have high cognitive development and high socio-emotional development and maturity. Two books that clearly define the qualities of high-caliber membership leadership that we seek and promote and that meets these criteria are:

2.) On the cognitive side of membership or leadership; Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems Foundations of Requisite Organization also by Otto Laske. (In addition to well trained logical and systems thinking skills our leaders strive to reach the levels of full meta-systemic dialectical thinking as described by Laske's in his second book listed here.)

If you are of a Spiritual Nature, We have a New form of Religion 2.0 a Science-Grounded, Personal Spirituality:

Religion 2.0 AKA Evolution Spirituality "the trans-denominational, secular meta-religion of evolution" is practiced as a personal spiritual form by some, but not all spiritual Universe community members. Depending upon their member make up, some Universe Communities will have almost no Religion 2.0. practices going on while in other Universe Communities it is their central focus. Each community determines its own level of interaction with Evolution Spirituality principles and practices. (Please note if you are not spiritually inclined, you can still participate fully in any Universe community.)

Here are some links that will give you more information on Religion 2.0

a.) To see what we hold that constitutes authentic Religion 2.0 practices, click here. You will be surprised how personal spirituality has evolved. (We even have both spiritual and secular versions of centering meditations which are practiced regularly within our community. These meditations are designed to help to remove biases, keep our members highly aware of the present and optimized to respond as positively as is possible to life's ongoing changes.)

b.) To understand what we mean when we say Religion 2.0 is a personalizable new form of spirituality, click here.

c.) For an excellent and more detailed summary description of the non-evolution science values, attitudes and behavioral characteristics of mature and developed Universe Community members and leaders, click here and see Fower's Fourth Stage of Universalizing Faith.

e.) For information on how we keep this new personal spirituality from getting unsafe check out our Spiritual Safeguards.

f.) One of our most valued tools that is used in this new form of personal, evolution grounded spirituality are the principles contained within our Open Source Spirituality Manifesto.

g.) Religion 2.0 is also a completely new form of trans-denominational and omni-denominational meta-spirituality and meta-religion. To find out more about what meta-religion means click here.

Creativity and Art in the Spiritual side of the Universe Community:

Click here to see how we value the role and importance of individual and group creativity and art within our community vision.

Our Simple Economic Model

We are a cooperative all members in good standing share in its ownership. Wages are based on successful application of the Universe Principles of Sustainability, work merit, quality and responsibility level. No full time staff member makes more than 10 times what any other full time staff member makes. The minimum full time staff income level is always adequate to cover all necessary basics including medical, education, housing, food, recreation and reserves.

The Universe Communities and New Technologies

To see how we we use and safely integrate new technologies into our communities, click here.

Our Deepest Constitutional Ideals for All Universe Community Members as Evolutionaries, Planetary Citizens and Universe Citizens:

Inspirations for Job One For Humanity Evolutioneers

It feels unacceptable to many people even to think of having a cosmology based on science. They misinterpret freedom of thought as requiring a refusal to believe anything. They see fanciful origin stories as spicing up the culture. The problem is, however, that spices, even in the most artful mixture, cannot compensate for the fact that there is no food—no data, no evidence. Such stories are not actually about anything beyond themselves. We are not arguing to throw away the spices but to start with some food and then only use those spices that improve the food at hand. Scientific reality is the food. Aspects of many origin stories can enrich our understanding of the scientific picture, but they cannot take its place.